Magenta
by Chiriru
Summary: She wonders what happens to dreamers who lose their dreams.


AN: Inspired by other Crayola Color Challenges, and some misplaced growing up feelings of my own. ^^. It never says the persons name, but I'm sure you guys can all figure it out! ^.~ Big-big hugs to Beta Mama Sully (Mama ^^) who beta'ed it in lightning time!  
  
----------------------------------  
  
Magenta  
  
by Chiri  
  
------------------------------  
  
She has an old box in her desk. A space-maker from years ago, it's cracked along the top but it still works well enough. Inside are the bits and broken ends of an entire grade school's supply of crayons. Every year she would need new crayons, every year she would return home with one broken or missing or dull from her package.  
  
Back-to-school shopping had always been a treat. Everything was new and had a heady scent. Maybe it was odd, but there was something that she reveled in the smell of new school supplies. Everything seemed poised, ready. And fresh and clean as well.  
  
She had loved colors. She still loves colors now, but it's different.  
  
Every year she would talk her mother into buying a 64-pack of crayons. Not just any, but Crayola. All her art supplies for school were Crayola. They had the truest colors, the longest lasting markers, the hardest to break pencils. Her eyes would light up at the yellow and green packages as she would walk down the isle, ooh-ing and aah-ing at all the choices.  
  
She would do it today, to some extent.  
  
Her mother would always ask why it was so important to have so many colors. If it wouldn't be easier to have 24 or even 48. It surely would be cheaper. She would calmly explain that you needed the right color for the right project. What if she needed silver? And it just wasn't there?  
  
Her mother would always cave.  
  
Now, a 64-pack seemed too small. Ninety-six hues and more were the big packs. Neon, glitter, shimmer, swirls. Short wax sticks that could come in any color you could dream of. And it still had that smell. It made her want to pick out a shade and draw.  
  
She had only broken a crayon by stepping on it. Or if someone else had stepped on it. Or if she had shared. Not many other mothers would spring for 64 shades back in the day. No, she had never held the crayon too tight. She had a perfect coloring technique. She could shade. She could outline. But she never could quite get what she was imagining on paper.  
  
When she was younger, she drew dresses. Dresses that were virtually unbearable, and she would never admit that she did so. And she'd color in her outlines, so carefully. Compliments and contrasts, always looking lovely. Always in pinks and purples and blues.  
  
Magenta was her favorite.  
  
And she always colored in crayon. Colored pencils were pretty, but she could never get a dark tone without a familiar snap interrupting her. Markers couldn't change shade, and her hand would always smear it all up anyway. For a while she liked watercolors and acrylics, but they became too pale or thick, despite her mother's efforts.  
  
No, she loved crayons.  
  
She doesn't draw anymore - a drawing teacher made some commentary that stopped that. But she picks up the broken bits and swipes over her paper. Curving, arching lines of yellow and orange sweep over the white. Purple and blue and red. It reminds her vaguely of a sunset as she brushed the gold wax over the yellow on her paper. She puts her hand in and pulls out a new color, signing her name.  
  
There was something unsatisfying about the act. She still couldn't draw. But the colors calmed her as the feeling of construction papered crayons. She never colored much at a time, the fact that she had so many crayons attested to that. Always conservative with them. In second grade they had a project where they had to strip their crayons and shave them. She had thought the teacher was crazy. The teacher had snapped her magenta in half, tore off the paper and told her to get to work.  
  
She cried.  
  
Of course, no one remembered that. Everyone else had thought the melted colors looked so pretty together but her. Her ice-cream cone had the best colors in it, it looked the most real. She hated it. When the teacher had given it back to her, she tried in vain to draw with it.  
  
When she got home she threw it on the floor, watching it shatter.  
  
That had made her smile. It was the first in her acts of open rebellion. Her mother had rushed out, alarmed at the noise. After explaining, her mother agreed with her. What a waste of perfectly good crayons.  
  
She still has the last box her mother bought her. It was only 48. Somehow she feels disappointed that her crayons were downgraded. As if all her golds and silvers and copper toned dreams were thrown out as was her true childhood. For being six years old, the crayons are all there. They are barely used. The box is still in good condition.  
  
Her favorite color is now blue.  
  
She's disappointed in herself. Somewhere along the line, she had lost her imagination, she fears. She would tell her mother new names like fuchsia or jungle green, excitedly. happily. She had loved the way "magenta" rolled off her tongue at five. Now she liked blue. It wasn't even cerulean - which she had pronounced as "chlorine" for a very long time.  
  
Blue, a "boy" color.  
  
She wonders what happens to dreamers who lose their dreams. She's afraid to find out. She's afraid of slipping from blue to black or gray. Of finding some time when she loses track of the little things. She's afraid that blue is a sign of that. When she was magenta every little detail was alive in her head. She can think back to the times of magenta in crystal-clear clarity. Blue times seem to run together. She's afraid of gray when she won't remember anything at all.  
  
And blue seems so ordinary. She never wants to be ordinary. She had wanted to be somebody. She had wanted to be a movie star so she could wear cool clothes and eat out every night. She had thought big. Magenta, the color of big thinkers. Blue, the color of consistency.  
  
The crayon with which she signed her name loopily was still in her hand. Her signature wasn't blue. It was not pink or purple or red. She smiled and returned the stick to her teal and pink space-maker. The next day she went shopping, daydreaming.  
  
Inside she saw something that spoke volumes to her. It was just like what should would of designed as a kid. She tried it on, posing for the mirror. Acting as if she had won the Oscar. This was it, if there ever was a day she would get to wear it. She suddenly felt a boost of confidence... her inner girly-girl was alive and well. Her mother's 64-color dreamer was still kicking. She changed back; she didn't have the money or the heart to buy it. But she had to check, just to reaffirm what she already knew.  
  
Size: 5; color: Magenta.  
  
- end - 


End file.
